Parting Cars, advice?

In his journey towards building a Factory Five, my father has started bidding on totaled current gen Mustangs for the Coyote and IRS.  I don't know what they are going for, but he seems confident of getting one on a $4k winning bid and ballparking $5500 delivered. He is also determined to sell off every usable part. Performance pack wheels, Brembo brakes, 6 speed transmission, no blown air bags so all interior parts. Is his price point delusional making this a moot point? Is he going to be sitting on half a car for 5 years trying to sell parts? He asked about selling on CL and ebay. I figure the local CL wouldn't net him enough exposure and be infested with scammers.  As far as ebay, I've never dealt with selling and am hesitant about trying to ship large items like doors. 

First question.  Why sell the 6 speed?

Patrick said:

First question.  Why sell the 6 speed?

Rear only shifter mount, no provisions for mid or forward mounting. Not ideal in an FF.

He probably won’t get one for $4k. But I haven’t been following these. He would almost certainly end up selling way more money in parts than he paid for it at that price. eBay and Craigslist make a good combo - list everything on CL but only the stuff you want to ship on eBay. Get ready to pack and ship a ton of stuff and realize it’s a j-o-b and is not effortless. 

I also have this excessively verbose thread I made about my process parting out an MR2 Spyder:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/parting-out-cars-for-fun-and-maybe-profit-2003-mr2/131419/page1/

I paid $1500 for it and have sold $3802 in parts from it in addition to getting the engine, transmission, rear bumper cover, and tail lights for "free." So parting out cars can be a good way to get parts for cheap if you have the time to invest. I've spent about 50-60 hours in it at this point, I would guess. I started this past July and have spend an hour or two here or there on it and feel it's worked out well. I'm driving my (formerly blown-engined) MR2 spyder to work and enjoying it so both sides of the coin were great for me.

It helps that I've had a ton of experience selling stuff on eBay.

Hey guys, 

I'm interested in this as well. What seems to be a great car to do this with? I think I'd try and focus on one model. 

I don't know about parting a newer mustang, but I can share my experience parting out an older car.  I bought a running and driving 91 miata for $1k, sold the entire interior, top, and a ton of little things.  Then sold the rolling chassis, with engine, for $800 (I think?).  I made around $3k in total.  Eventually threw out a couple of boxes of parts that never sold.

I'd suggest advertising on enthusiast forums, specific for whatever vehicle you're parting out.  Letting folks know what you have, and see if anyone has any requests.  I sold quite a bit that way.  CL is good, but it can be slow, and it can be a real hassle meeting people constantly.  Ebay is good, but expect to be shipping everything.  What really surprised me is all the little things, a switch, a bracket, cup holder tray, etc.  Ebay is good for that.  I made a lot more than I expected on the little stuff.

I did this with a c5 vette last year.  I got all the parts I needed to keep and ended up profiting around 2k.  Made most of the money on parts I sold and shipped through ebay.

In reply to Brian :

I’ve a friend who made a career of doing that sort of thing. It’s filled with long hours, more expense and frustration than you’d believe and plenty of people who will take any advantage they can. 

Im’ ppretty much the opposite.   A lot of stuff I just throw away. Not worth the hassle!

In reply to Brian :

Facebook Marketplace seems to work better than Craigslist most of the time. 

He'll likely be sitting on certain parts for months at a time.  A lot of parts just won't sell. It'll also take a decent amount of time to remove the part, clean it, take decent enough pictures of it, etc etc.

Forums and Facebook groups come in handy in this regard in that you can just post up pictures of the car as a whole, the packages/options, and what's sold. Plus there's no eBay fee, just the Paypal fee. Downside is no shipping discount if he needs to ship.

In all honesty, if the engine, wiring, etc is worth his assumed $5.5k cost, it'd be worth it as he'd end up seeing a profit no matter what.

But if you're able to get the engine and all needed parts associated with it for a couple grand less, might not be worth it.

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

He has priced out a coyote and IRS new and it comes to $9500. I don’t know if he has looked at the individual items used. 

In reply to Brian :

Then yeah, I'd pick the car up in a heartbeat because it's already money saved as opposed to getting new. The money made from the part out would just be icing.